Here are the loose translation of some of the excerpts. Read it and get awestruck by the prophetic words of a visionary.
(I have been reading this nonstop since the morning of August 5, writes the author of this post)

Deeno Daan

“There is no god in that temple”, said the Saint.
The King was enraged;
“No God? Oh Saint, aren’t you speaking like an atheist?
On the throne studded with priceless gems, beams the golden idol,
And yet, you proclaim that’s empty?”

“It’s not empty; It’s rather full of the Royal pride.
You have bestowed yourself, oh King, not the God of this world”,
Remarked the saint.

The King frowned, “2 million golden coins
Were showered on that grand structure that kisses the sky,
I offered it to the Gods after performing all the necessary rituals,
And you dare claim that in such a grand temple,
There is no presence of God”?

The Saint calmly replied, “in the very year in which, twenty million of your subjects were struck by a terrible drought;
The pauperized masses without any food or shelter,
came begging at your door crying for help, only to be turned away,
they were forced to take refuge in forests, caves, camping under roadside foliages, derelict old temples;
and in that very year
when you spent 2 million gold to build that grand temple of your’s,
that was the day when God pronounced:

“My eternal home is lit by everlasting lamps,
In the midst of an azure sky,
In my home the foundations are built with the values:
Of Truth, Peace, Compassion and Love.
The poverty stricken puny miser,
Who could not provide shelter to his own homeless subjects,
Does he really fancy of giving me a home?”

That is the day God left that Temple of yours.
And joined the poor beside the roads, under the trees.
Like emptiness of the froth in the vast seas,
Your mundane temple is as hollow.
It’s just a bubble of wealth and pride.’

The enraged King howled,
“oh you sham cretin of a person,
Leave my kingdom this instant’.

The Saint replied calmly,
“The very place where you have exiled the Divine,
Kindly banish the devout too”.

Rabindranath Tagore,
20th of Shravan (that is yesterday), 1307 (as per Bengali Calendar)

(From the Facebook page of Banojyotsna Lahiri, yesterday)

The post Deeno Daan, Rabindranath Tagore, about a temple, 120 years ago appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Rabindranath Tagore, born on May 7, 1861, is hailed as one the greatest Indian philosophers, writers and poets of all times. The first non-European to win a Nobel Prize in Literature, his works were ahead of his time, as were his views on social structures, and ‘nationalism’. His birth anniversary today, is a good time to remember his words on ‘Nationalism’, especially at a time when it is being used to target those who speak up for the rights of the marginalised.

• “Nationalism is a great menace. It is the particular thing which for years has been at the bottom of India’s troubles. And as much as we have been ruled and dominated by a nation that is strictly political in its attitude, we have tried to develop within ourselves, despite our inheritance from the past, a belief in our eventual political destiny.”    (Source:  tagoreweb)

• “Yes, this is the logic of the Nation. And it will never heed the voice of truth and goodness. It will go on in its ring-dance of moral corruption, linking steel unto steel, and machine unto machine; trampling under its tread all the sweet flowers of simple faith and the living ideals of man.” 

• “Neither the colourless vagueness of cosmopolitanism, nor the fierce self-idolatry of nation-worship, is the goal of human history.” 

• “Because each nation has its own history of thieving and lies and broken faith, therefore there can only flourish international suspicion and jealousy, and international moral shame becomes anæmic to a degree of ludicrousness. The nation’s bagpipe of righteous indignation has so often changed its tune according to the variation of time and to the altered groupings of the alliances of diplomacy, that it can be enjoyed with amusement as the variety performance of the political music hall.” 

• “But now, where the spirit of the Western nationalism prevails, the whole people is being taught from boyhood to foster hatreds and ambitions by all kinds of means—by the manufacture of half-truths and untruths in history, by persistent misrepresentation of other races and the culture of unfavourable sentiments towards them, by setting up memorials of events, very often false, which for the sake of humanity should be speedily forgotten, thus continually brewing evil menace towards neighbours and nations other than their own.”

• “Once again I draw your attention to the difficulties India has had to encounter and her struggle to overcome them. Her problem was the problem of the world in miniature. India is too vast in its area and too diverse in its races. It is many countries packed in one geographical receptacle.”

• “You who live under the delusion that you are free, are every day sacrificing your freedom and humanity to this fetich of nationalism, living in the dense poisonous atmosphere of world-wide suspicion and greed and panic.”

• “Clever lies become matters of self-congratulation. Solemn pledges become a farce—laughable for their very solemnity.

• “Man’s history is being shaped according to the difficulties it encounters.” 

• “catastrophes of nature whose traces are soon forgotten.” 

(Source:  Goodreads)

The post Nationalism is a cruel epidemic of evil that is sweeping over the human world of the present age: Rabindranath Tagore appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Edited and annotated by Chinmoy Guha, Bridging East and West: Rabindranath Tagore and Romain Rolland Correspondence (1919-1940), brings together, for the first time in English, letters and telegrams that are among the finest exchanges of thought between the Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) and the French novelist, playwright, and biographer, Romain Rolland (1866-1944) — the East and the West.

The book records the differences of opinion and misunderstandings between the two outstanding humanists of contemporary history, who often felt isolated in their own countries, on issues like Gandhi and Fascism. It is also the story of a profound friendship, where Tagore and Rolland unlock their hearts to each other.​ This correspondence, comprises 46 letters and telegrams, along with three dialogues between the two at various times, as well as letters by Rathindranath Tagore and others.

The following is an excerpt from the Introduction to the book:

Image courtesy OUP

To the magic bird of India I offer this youthful song of a little blackbird of
France who was trying his wings, on leaving his nest. 

— To Rabindranath Tagore, with my affection and respect. 

Romain Rolland¹ Villeneuve, 1931

Quest for an Alternative Discourse 
Is the near-forgotten interface between two cultural icons from India and Europe—Rabindranath Tagore² (1861–1941) and Romain Rolland³ (1866–1944)—one of the most significant dialogues of the last century,⁴ which Isaiah Berlin⁵ described as ‘the most terrible century in Western history’?⁶ These two visionaries, both prolific letter writers, tried to build bridges between the East and the West at a crucial point of time in history when ‘the whole race of mankind seemed to be in a cataclysm of death’.⁷ 

The two Nobel laureates in literature, who won the award consecutively,⁸ suffered intensely at the advent of war and questioned the whole idea of the frontier and disrupted the notion of the nation as ‘a narcissistic narrative of national progress’.⁹ It was a journey towards the imaging of a different world which would create the possibility of not only a different kind of space, but a new space outside cultural hegemony. It was a quest for an alternative discourse.

Was it not inevitable that these two should meet in a moment of chaos and anxiety, each representing an era, its tension, its battles, its dreams? Always in search of a cultural idol who could radically transform the prevalent discourse, Rolland’s encounter with Tagore, at first so improbable, seems almost preordained. Like their friendship, this correspondence (1919–40) too was a fascinating cross-cultural encounter, an intimate fireside conversation, an interface not only between two historical and cultural discourses, but between two great artists who, in spite of their mutual respect and admiration, occasionally collided with each other, and yet never gave up. This correspondence is a document of this heroic endeavour to create a new imaginative space for mankind in times of deep anguish and pain. Rodolphe Schlemmer’s¹⁰ excellent photo, which framed together Rolland and Tagore in Villa Lionnette¹¹ in Villeneuve, Switzerland, in July 1926, posted it for eternity and remains in many ways a symbol of international understanding and peace.

[…]
In their attempt to create an intercultural discourse, they exchanged at least 46 letters and telegrams between 1919 and 1940. Published for the first time in English, these letters—which are now in the public domain—will not only narrate the story of a profound friendship but also an account of their conscience. There is a splendid serenity in these letters. They also reveal a subterranean tension when the two did not see eye to eye on some fundamental political issues of the time, like Latin American dictatorship or Mussolini’s fascism. As Rolland wrote so significantly to Kalidas Nag¹² on 8 February 1923: ‘Tagore’s letters are a testimony of the highest value. Whatever Tagore writes has something ethereal about it: it is the song of a “Prophet-bird” (the title of a beautiful page by Schumann),¹³ but it also sets in motion a historic debate’.¹⁴ 

[…]
Tagore had written to his son Rathindranath in 1916: ‘The era of nationalistic parochialism is over. The first beginning of the global fraternity of the future will be seen in the greens of Bolpur’.¹⁵ He probably meant what Frantz Fanon would write many years later: ‘National consciousness which is not Nationalism, is the only thing that will give us an international dimension’.¹⁶ ‘The idea of the Nation’, Tagore stated in nationalism lectures, ‘is one of the most powerful anaesthetics that man has invented. Under the influence of its fumes the whole people can carry out its systematic programme of the most virulent self-seeking without being in the least aware of its moral perversion—in fact feeling dangerously resentful if it is pointed out’( Nationalism 25–6). 

What really prompted the transnational dialogue between Rolland and Tagore was the latter’s tirade against ‘the menace’ of ‘the organized selfishness of Nationalism’ (Nationalism 23) at the Imperial University of Tokyo in June 1916, which Rolland noted down in faraway France in his diary, calling it ‘ un tournant dans l’histoire du monde’¹⁷ [a turning point in the history of the world, Inde 13]. ‘The Asians are now conscious of the inferiority of Europe’,¹⁸ he scribbled in his diary. Rolland took down excerpts¹⁹ from Tagore’s interview on ‘Race Unity’ in Christian Science Monitor —ideas which were so dear to Rolland’s own.²⁰ Condemning the modern civilization for its dissociation of intelligence and emotion, Tagore had called it a major period of transition in history. In all great movements, there was action and reaction. The war was only its negative side, an expression of resistance. It was a confused dawn, thought Tagore, from which would emerge unity, peace and light.²¹

Three years later, Rolland would dash off a letter to Tagore written on 10 April 1919 in faraway Santiniketan in India, requesting him to sign the Declaration of the Independence of Mind . He wrote: 
A number of free minds which feel the urgency to react against the nearly universal oppression and servitude of intellect have drawn up the project of the Declaration of Independence of the spirit. I enclose here a copy. Would you honour us by joining this project? It seems to me that our ideas are in harmony with yours. 

…I shall be personally obliged to you if you can mobilize a few personalities from India, Japan and China. I wish that henceforth the intellect of Asia will take a more active part in the expression of European thought. It is my dream to see the union of these two hemispheres of the mind. I admire you for contributing to it more than anyone else. Allow me to say in conclusion how dear to us are your wisdom and your art. 

Just a few days back, after the Jallianwalla Bagh genocide on 13 April 1919 (a day before, Tagore had written to Gandhi expressing concern about the Martial Law to suppress defenseless people),²² he had sent C.F. Andrews to Punjab, but the latter was not permitted entry.²³ Tagore had also failed to mobilize support for a protest meeting in Kolkata (28 May 1919).²⁴ A shattered poet showed the world that he had no intention to live in an ivory tower, and renounced the knighthood²⁵ conferred on him by the British. Earlier, probably still very bitter about the recent episode, Tagore immediately responded to Rolland’s plea with deep empathy on 24 June. He wrote: 
When my mind was steeped in the gloom of the thought that the lesson of the late war had been lost and that the people were trying to perpetuate their hatred, anger and greed into the same organized menace for the world which threatened themselves with disaster, your letter came and cheered me with its message of hope. 

The truths that save us have always been uttered by the few and rejected by the many and have triumphed through their failures. It is enough for me to know that the higher conscience of Europe has been able to assert itself in the voice of one of her choicest spirits through the ugly clamours of passionate politics, and I gladly hasten to accept your invitation to join the ranks of those free souls who in Europe have conceived the project of a Declaration of Independence of the Spirit.

1. Ramananda Chatterjee, editor. The Golden Book of Tagore: A Hornage to Rabindranath Tagore from India and the World. Kolkata: The Golden Book Committee, 1931. For original French, see p. 2; for English translation, p. 333.
2. Bengali poet, who was also a pioneering lyricist, composer, short-story writer, novelist, playwright, essayist, educator, letter-writer, and painter who almost single-handedly changed the cultural discourse of his time in Bengal and India. A product of the nineteenth-century Bengal ‘Renaissance, his monumental achievements remind one of Goethe and Victor Hugo. He was the first Asian to win the Nobel Prize for literature, in 1913.
Rolland referred to Tagore at least a 100 times in his diary bide (1915-1943), more than 30 times in the second volume of Romain Rolland—Stefan Zweig Correspondence (1920-7) Edition établie, présentée et annotée par Jean-Yves Brancy. Traduction des lettres allemandes par Siegun Barat. Paris: Albin Michel, 2015 (henceforth RZC), and six times in the third volume (1928-40), 2014.
3. French novelist, dramatist, biographer, essayist, polemicist, letter-writer. and musicologist. Born in Clamecy (Niévre), of Emile Rolland, notary, and Antoinette-Marie Courot on 29 January 1866, he studied in the college of Clamecy, and then in Paris (1873-80), Lycée Louis-Le-Grand (1882-6), Ecole Normale Supérieure (1886-9), Agrégation in History (1889), École française de Rome (1889-91), Doctor és Lettres (1895: on the History of Art). Professor at École Normale Supérieure and Sorbonne from 1895 to 1912. Author of the novels Jean-Christophe, Colas Breugnon (1919), Pierre et Luce (1920), Clérambault (1920), L’Ame enchantée (1922-33); plays like Les Loups (1898), Danton (1899-1900), Le Quatorze Juillet (1902), Liluli (1919), Le jeu de l’amour et de la mort (1925), Paques-fleuries (1926), Les Léonides (1928), and Robespierre (1939); biographies of Millet(1902), Beethoven (1903, 1928), Beethoven: Les Grandes époques créatrices (1930-49), Michelangelo (1906), Handel (1910), Tolstoy (1910), Gandhi (1924), Ramakrishna (1929), Vivekananda (1930), and Péguy (1945); Le Théȃtre du people (1903); Quinze ans de Combat (I Will Not Rest, 1935); autobiographical writings like Journal des années de Guerre 1914-1919 (1952), Le Voyage intérieur (1959), Voyage á Moscou (1992). Rolland’s correspondences have been regularly published in Cahiers Romain Rolland (Paris: Albin Michel; henceforth CRR) from 1948. One of the leading voices of Europe against nationalism and war, he is remembered for his anti-war appeal, Au-dessus de la Mêlée (1915). Nobel Prize for literature in 1915, delivered in 1916, ‘as a tribute to the lofty idealism of his literary production and to the sympathy and love of truth with which he has described different types of human beings’ (`The Nobel Prize in Literature 1915. Nobelprize.org. Nobel Media AB 2014. Web. 27 June 2018. http:// www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizesniterature/laureates/1915/).
4. The other two noteworthy interfaces of Tagore were with Mahatma Gandhi and Albert Einstein.
5. Isaiah Berlin (1909-1997): Russian-born British social and political philosopher and historian.
6. Quoted in Hobsbawm, Eric. The Age of Extremes 1914-1991. London: Abacus, 2012, 1.
7. This is Charles Freer Andrews’ (1871-1940) description of the world situation just before the encounter between Rolland and Tagore.Rolland and Tagore’, Liber Amicorum Romain Rolland, Zurich: Rotapfel Verlag, 1926, reprinted in Rolland and Tagore, Kolkata: Visva-Bharati, 1945, 10. Tagore dedicated his Nationalism (1917) to Andrews.
8. Tagore won the Nobel Prize in 1913, Rolland in 1915. There was no Nobel Prize in 1914 because of the World War.
9. Homi Bhabha, editor, Nation and Narration. London: Routledge, 1990.
10. Rodolphe Schlemmer (1878-1972) from Montreux was the German photographer who took the famous photographs of Tagore (26 July 1926 at Villa Lionnette, Villeneuve) and Gandhi (9 December 1931) with Romain Rolland. He learnt photography in Geneva and opened a workshop in Montreux in 1910.
11. Rolland’s sister Madeleine’s house in Villeneuve (Inde 1915-1973. Paris: Albin Michel, 1961, 127). The photos were taken on 26 June 1926 after 5 p.m.
12. Kalidas Nag (1891-1966): Bengali historian, professor of ancient Indian history and culture at University of Calcutta (1926-55) and general secretary of the Royal Asiatic Society of Bengal (1942-6). He researched under Sylvain Lévi for his DLitt at the Sorbonne on Kautilya’s Arthasastra. He met Romain Rolland in Paris on April 1922, and the latter found him ‘brilliant, full of vitality and fire’ (Inde 23). The Weltbürger (World-traveller, in Rolland’s words) soon became his ‘intellectual lieutenant’ and one of his closest confidants. It is Nag who helped Rolland to write the biography of Mahatma Gandhi (1924). His correspondence p (135 letters) with the Rolland is indispensable for an appraisal of the relationship between Rolland and Tagore. See, The Tower and the Sea: Romain Rolland-Kalidas Nag Correspondence 1922-1938, edited and French letters translated by Chinrnov Guha, 1996, New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi, 2010, 2016 henceforth cited as TS‘ . Nag collaborated with Pierre-Jean Jouve for the French translation of Tagore’s Balaka (Le Cygne 1923). Rolland wrote to Stefan Zweig on 11 July 1923: ‘He is one of the richest and most charming spirits in modern India: Professor of History at the University of Calcutta, he has a vast culture and an internal flame’ (RZC 348).
13. Robert Schumann (1810-1856): German composer of the Romantic era.’The Prophet-bird’: No. 7 from Forest Scenes, Op. 82.
14. TS 51.
15. 11 October 1916, Chithipatra, vol. 1 Kolkata: Visva-Bharati, 70.
16. Frantz Fanon. The Wretched of the Earth. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1967, 199.
17. Inde 13.
18. Inde 12.
19. Inde 14.
20. ‘Des idées trés parentes des miennes’ (Inde 14).
21. Inde 14.
22. Sabyasachi Bhattacharya. Rabindranath Tagore: An Interpretation. New Delhi: Penguin Viking, 2011, 278.
23. Sabyasachi Bhattacharya, Rabindranath Tagore 276.
24. Sabyasachi Bhattacharya, Rabindranath Tagore 276.
25. We reproduce Tagore’s famous letter of renouncement of knighthood to Lord Chelmsford, governor-general of India, on 30 May 1919 (courtesy: The English Writings of Rabindranath Tagore, vol. 3, edited by Sisir Kumar Das, New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi, 1996, 751-2) after General Dyer, governor of
Punjab, fired without warning on an unarmed crowd of mostly villagers, protesting against the infamous ‘Rowlatt Act’, killing in an official estimate 379 persons (unofficial accounts gave much higher figures): 
YOUR EXCELLENCY,
The enormity of the measures taken by the government in the Punjab for quelling some local disturbances has, with a rude shock, revealed to our minds the helplessness of our position as British subjects of India. The disproportionate severity of punishments inflicted upon the unfortunate people and the methods of carrying them out, we are convinced, are without parallel in the history of civilized governments, barring some Conspicuous exceptions, recent and remote. Considering that such treatment has been meted out to a population, disarmed and resourceless, by a power which has the most terribly efficient organization for destruction of human lives, we must strongly assert that it can claim no political expediency, far less moral justification. The accounts of the insults and sufferings undergone by our brothers in the Punjab have trickled through the gagged silence, reaching every corner of India, and the universal agony of indignation roused in the hearts of our people has been ignored by our rulers—possibly congratulating themselves for imparting what they imagine as salutary lessons. The ,:allousness has been praised by most of the Anglo-Saxon papers, which have in some case gone to the brutal length of making fun of our sufferings, without receiving the least check from the same authority, relentlessly careful in smothering every cry of pain and expression of judgment from the organs representing the sufferers. Knowing that our appeals have been in vain and that the passion of vengeance is blinding the noble vision of statesmanship in our Government which could so easily afford to be magnanimous, as befitting its physical strength and normal tradition, the very least that I can do for my country is to take all consequences upon myself in giving voice to the protest of the millions of my countrymen, surprised into a dumb anguish of terror.
The time has come when badges of honour make our shame glaring in the incongruous content of humiliation, and as for my part wish to stand, shorn, of all special distinctions, by the side of those of my countrymen who, for their so-called insignificance, are liable to suffer degradation not fix for human beings. And these are the reasons which have compelled me to ask Your Excellency, with due deference and regret, to relieve me of my title of knighthood which I had the honour to accept from His Majesty the King at the hands of your predecessor, for whose nobleness of heart I still entertain great admiration. 
Yours faithfully,
RABINDRANATH TAGORE
30 May 1919 

Chinmoy Guha is professor of English and former chair, University of Calcutta, former Vice-Chancellor of Rabindra Bharati University, Kolkata, and Director of Publications, Embassy of France in India, New Delhi. The French Government conferred on him the titles of Chevalier des Palmes Académiques (2010) and Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres (2013). He received the Vidyasagar Puroshkar from the West Bengal Government in 2017. His works include Where the Dreams Cross: T. S. Eliot and French Poetry, The Tower and the Sea: Romain Rolland-Kalidas Nag Correspondence 1922-1938 (Sahitya Akademi), Tagore at Home in the World (co-ed, Sage Publications). His best-known collections of essays in Bengali are: Chilekothhar Unmadini, Garho Shankher Khonje and Ghumer Darja Thele (Ananda Publishers and Signet Press).

These are excerpts from Bridging East and West: Rabindranath Tagore and Romain Rolland Correspondence (1919-1940), edited and annotated by Chinmoy Guha and published by Oxford University Press, 2019. Republished here with permission from the publisher.

Courtesy: Indian Cultural Forum

The post Questioning the Frontiers: Rabindranath Tagore and Romain Rolland appeared first on SabrangIndia.

However, an oft unnoticed facet of this multiarmed polyglot, is remarkably, that of an undeniable bigot. Albeit Tagore did much to overhaul the exploitative social system and was the harbinger of progressive, modernist thought in Bengal, he was no Namboodripad or Nehru. Averse to the Abrahamic religions, and in spite of all ideological reformist endeavours, Tagore harboured an unmistakably soft spot for Hinduism, his religion of birth and upbringing.

Some of these historically sidelined figments and excerpts from Tagore’s works are presented herefore:

“There are two religions in earth, which have distinct enmity against all other religions. These two are Christianity and Islam. They are not just satisfied with observing their own religions, but are determined to destroy all other religions. That’s why the only way to make peace with them is to embrace their religions.”

Original works of Rabindranath Vol. 24 page 375, Vishwa Bharti; 1982.

Tagore spews even more vitriol towards the Muslim community; In typical demonising fashion that was the omnipresent and omniprevalent norm of the day; scapegoating of Muslims for social ills, a prevailing mood of nationwide unrest and shortcomings of the traditional institutions, in general, is depicted in his works as is the prevailing notion of Hindu generosity. Keenly and unambiguously reflected in his writings is, a lopsided, exaggerated Hindu victimhood and romanticised, pontificated tolerance. Unfortunately, this biased majoritarian, misconceived notion endures till date, with ubiquity.

One such excerpt goes as:

Whenever a Muslim called upon the Muslim society, he never faced any resistance-he called in the name of one God ‘Allah-ho-Akbar’. On the other hand, when we (Hindus) call will call, ‘come on, Hindus’, who will respond? We, the Hindus, are divided in numerous small communities, many barriers-provincialism-who will respond overcoming all these obstacles? “We suffered from many dangers, but we could never be united. When Mohammed Ghouri brought the first blow from outside, the Hindus could not be united, even in the those days of imminent danger. When the Muslims started to demolish the temples one after another, and to break the idols of Gods and Goddesses, the Hindus fought and died in small units, but they could not be united. It has been provided that we were killed in different ages due to out discord. Weakness harbors sin. So, if the Muslims beat us and we, the Hindus, tolerate this without resistance-then, we will know that it is made possible only by our weakness. For the sake of ourselves and our neighbour Muslims also, we have to discard our weakness. We can appeal to our neighbour Muslims, `Please don’t be cruel to us. No religion can be based on genocide’ – but this kind of appeal is nothing, but the weeping of the weak person. When the low pressure is created in the air, storm comes spontaneously; nobody can stop it for sake for religion. Similarly, if weakness is cherished and be allowed to exist, torture comes automatically – nobody can stop it. Possibly, the Hindus and the Muslims can make a fake friendship to each other for a while, but that cannot last forever. As long as you don’t purify the soil, which grows only thorny shrubs you can not expect any fruit.

“Swamy Shraddananda’’, written by Rabindranath in Magh, 1333 Bangabda; compiled in the book ‘Kalantar’

It’s an unmistakable allusion to the prevailing preconception of Islam being inherently violent and the adherents to the faith being somehow extraordinarily hard-line, firebrand fundamentalists. In India, the unjust label of qattar (staunch) is still recklessly used to refer to the community, implicating mindless hypercharge and invoking connotations of blind faith and unnaturally devout, religion-inspired animosity.
 

• When two-three different religions claim that only their own religions are true and all other religions are false, their religions are only ways to Heaven, conflicts can not be avoided. Thus, fundamentalism tries to abolish all other religions. This is called Bolshevism in religion. Only the path shown by the Hinduism can relieve the world form this meanness.     Tagore, `Aatmaparichapa’ in his book `Parichaya’

• The terrible situation of the country makes my mind restless and I cannot keep silent. Meaningless ritual keep the Hindus divided in hundred sects. Sop we are suffering from series of defeats. We are tired and worn-out by the fortunes by the internal external enemies. The Muslims are united in religion and rituals. The Bengali Muslims the South Indian Muslims and even the Muslims outside India-all are united. They always stand untied in face of danger. The broken and divided Hindus will not be able to combat them. Days are coming when the Hindus will be again humiliated by the Muslims. “You are a mother of children, one day you will die, passing the future of Hindus society on the weak shoulders of your children, but think about their future.”  From the letter to Hemantabala Sarkar, written on 16the October, 1933, quoted in Bengali weekly `Swastika’, 21-6-1999

• A very important factor which is making it almost impossible for Hindu-Muslim unity to become an accomplished fact is that the Muslims can not confine their patriotism to any one country. I had frankly asked (the Muslims) whether in the event of any Mohammedan power invading India, they (Muslims) would stand side by side with their Hindu neighbours to defend their common land. I was not satisfied with the reply I got from them… Even such a man as Mr. Mohammad Ali (one of the famous Ali brothers, the leaders of the Khilafat Movement-the compiler) has declared that under no circumstances is it permissible for any Mohammedan, whatever be his country, to stand against any Mohammedan.”Rabindranath Tagore, Interview of Rabindranath Tagore in `Times of India’, 18-4-1924 in the column, `Through Indian Eyes on the Post Khilafat Hindu Muslim Riots. Also in A. Ghosh: “Making of the Muslim Psyche” in Devendra Swamp (ed.), Politics of Conversion, New Delhi, 1986, p. 148. And in S.R. Goel, Muslim Separatism – Causes and Consequences (1987).

 
“Dr. Munje said in another part of his report that, eight hundred years ago, the Hindu king of Malabar (now Kerala) on the advice of his Brahmin ministers, made big favor to the Arab Muslim to settle in his kingdom. Even he appeased the Arab Muslims by converting the Hindus to Islam to an extent to making law for compulsory conversion of a member of each Hindu fisherman family in to Islam. Those, whose nature is to practice idiocy rather than common sense, never can enjoy freedom even if they are in the throne. They turn the hour of action in to a night of merriment. That’s why they are always struck by the ghost at the middle of the day.”

“The king of Malabar once gave away his throne to idiocy. That idiocy is still ruling Malabar from a Hindu throne. That’s why the Hindus are still being beaten and saying that God is there, turning the faces towards the sky. Throughout India we allowed idiocy to rule and surrender ourselves to it. That kingdom of idiocy – the fatal lack of commonsense – was continuously invaded by the Pathans, sometimes by the Mughols and sometimes by the British. From outside we can only see the torture done by them, but they are only the tools of torture, not really the cause. The real reason of the torture is our lack of common sense and our idiocy, which is responsible for our sufferings. So we have to fight this idiocy that divided the Hindus and imposed slavery on us……..If we only think about the torture we will not find any solution. But if we can get rid of our idiocy, the tyrants will surrender to us.”

[’Samasya,’ (The Problem), Agrahayan, 1330 Bangabda, in  “Kalantar”.]

Tagore perhaps could’ve taken a leaf out of the book from another national poet from the subcontinent, composer of an ulterior national hymn Saare Jahaan se Achha, which has since been conferred a quasi-National Song status, both formally and informally and once a prime contender for the National Anthem of India, subsequently losing it to Tagore’s Jana Gana Mana. The self-christened Shayar-i-Mashriq (Poet of the East) Muhammad “Allama” Iqbal, was a glowing beacon of harmonisation and harmoniser of seemingly insurmountable, abyssal interconflicts.

Furthermore, Bangladesh’s national poet Kazi Nazrul Islam, a distinct epitome in his own, illustrated the essentiality of his creativity and his indiscriminate, pure, ingenuity, in his elegant renditions of humanhood, transcendental of narrow sectarian bounds, and his writings on Kali, and Durga Puja beautifully portray and capture the soul of the land, its culture and humanitarianism. Nazrul’s philosophy, underlying and characterising all his vibrant work, was naturally neutral, not artificially secular-conformist, or modified for the sake of integrity. His spirit was integral in origin and character.

At a time when partisanship to carve out Pakistan and muslim intelligentsia and top-brass were overwhelmingly in favour of the two-nation theory, Iqbal’s hymns Saare jahaan se achchha hindostaan hamaraa (Our Hindustan is better than all of the world) and Kuchh baat to hai hum-mein ki hasti mitati nahin hamaari... (There must be some [virtue] in us, that our [civilization’s] grandeur is indelible [and unbroken]) were wielded to foster a sense of togetherness and all-pervasive patriotism in unison. However the most well-intended rime of the poet, comes in the form a couplet, that conspicuously reflects his masterful reconciliation and intricate elegant diplomacy, which appeased all and irked none:

At a first glance, Raama, a manifestational formful Hindu deity seems irreconcilable with an Abrahamic religion that contends a single omnipotent, attribute-free Almighty. Islam doesn’t permit devoted exaltation or venerating chanting of anyone but Allah, the Supreme, but Iqbal bypasses the need to deify Lord Raama, yet beautifully augment him to unmistakably typical, traditional Islamic adulation. Iqbal accomplishes this with a succinct, idyllic and refreshingly original verse:

Hai raam ke vajūd pe hindostāñ ko naaz;
ahl-e-nazar samajhte haiñ is ko imām-e-hind. 
 
(India is mighty proud of Raama’s sacred name,
Discerning minds respect his word as voice of God [Priest/Cleric/Clergyman].) 

[Translated version of poem ‘Ram’. Taken from ‘Allama Iqbal, Selected Poetry’ By Muhammad Iqbal, K. C. Kanda] 

Thus, Iqbal forges two identities into a seamless, eclectic, eclessiastical continuum, simultaneously capturing national imagination and popular Hindu sensibilities, while ruffling none of the Islamic sensibilities, if not embellishing. Iqbal’s spirited verse was no artifical flattery and appeasement, merely an expression of his cultural pride in the subcontinental spiritual aesthetic and heritage.

In an era when colonial intervention and systematically undertaken divide-and-rule policy stoked up communal sentiment, Iqbal’s hymns were used to exert a pacifying effect, foster mutual understanding and fraternal faith, and alleviate two-way distrust and alienation. Meanwhile, numerous contemporary works serve to bellow air into the rife blaze and undo the long-constructed brotherhood. Art, like nuclear energy is ambivalent: in hands of demagogues, it’s a weapon of mass destruction. Creativity is potentially, the most destructive of forces: it’s up to us, where we aim it, at prejudices, or understanding.

Tagore was too elegant a freethinker to be indoctrinated, nonetheless, his beliefs were skewed against the inherent equality of faiths and lopsided to glorify the inherent pacifism, fraternity and moral chastity of his own. They stand in testimony to men being a product of their times and also, choices, as the former argument would make the work of contemporary activists, stand for naught. They remind us to remain ever-skeptical-in-retrospect, question our spoonfed and hardwired cultural notions, demystify and rescind and the crux of no figure being sacrosanct enough to be unquestionable. Let this serve as an iconoclast to rescind their romanticism, rid of the deification and edification, and strip our historocultural idols of their invariably accompanying entitlements, in general. They command our utmost respect and unquestioned ideological allegiance, and serve as role models, inspirations and idols to innumerable; It’s time they prove themselves worthy of it.

Albeit, spoken in a different context, this unanimously relatable excerpt, by Tagore’s own admission, is pertinent to conclude the aforesaid: “My debts are large, my failures great, my shame secret and heavy; yet I come to ask for my good, I quake in fear lest my prayer be granted.”

Pitamber Kaushik is a journalist, columnist, amateur researcher, activist, and writer, having previously written for The Telegraph, The Gulf News, The Sunday Independent, and The New Delhi Times, amongst numerous other national and international newspapers and outlets.

Courtesy: Counter Current

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The act of conspiracy and lust for power coupled together can spell a disaster for the minimum balance in a developing democracy like ours. A conspiracy theory is not only funny, it sometimes proves to be dangerous, it may invite hate, sometimes violence and can also catalyse heinous genocide. Several incidents of rioting and recent lynching of minorities in the suspicion of beef eating, catapult a sense of fear among conscious citizens. It becomes important for us, being conscious citizens of our nation, to hunt the conspiracy theory and expose the strings of hate before they dismantle us.

One among many is the Indira-Shantiniketan conspiracy theory. We, as constituents of internet-driven world village, are hugely dependent on the internet for fact-finding. Our search engine optimization is a good tool and we prefer not to slide down the first page of search engine results as the search metric may not be wrong and we usually tend to think so. Driven by curiosity, I took the help of Google and preferably surfed for ‘Indira Gandhi Shantiniketan’ and what it led me to was utterly shocking. A Quora question and several answers to it, several views and several upvotes to the apparent conspiracy theories. Then, I visited answers’ profile and none appeared fake, but yes, they were strongly misinformed. Their references to the conspiracy theory were echoing it all. One among several others was a pro-Khalistani blog ‘Indira Gandhi and The Shameless Nehru Dynasty.’ It has many stubs, one headline counted ‘Indira Priyadarshini perpetuated immorality in the Nehru dynasty.’ Several social media shares made it quite evident that it was a conspiracy theory triggered by bias.

But accused is not convicted unless proof uncovers the crime. Situated in the cultural capital of Gujarat state is Smt. Hansa Mehta Library which has an immense access to preserved books, manuscripts and data, some banned even. I accessed the original print of ‘A Bunch of Old Letters: Being Mostly Written to Jawaharlal Nehru and Some Written by Him,’ published in 1958 by Jawaharlal Nehru himself. To my surprise, index contained several references to the letters written by Rabindranath Tagore to Jawaharlal Nehru.

Here are some relevant to the context:
 

These mentions completely uproot the foundations of misinformation and an evolving conspiracy theory. There existed some loopholes in the career of former prime minister Indira Gandhi, that could be the declaration of Emergency or something else, but to my best view, this is certainly not the one.

Postcard News, a known mouthpiece of right-wing ideology, published an article on Indira Gandhi: ‘My 12 years of sex life with Indira Gandhi came to an end after I saw her with another man behind the curtain: M.O Mathai.’ It earned more than a hundred thousand shares on social media. Recently, Bengaluru police booked co-founder of Postcard News for spreading false information against a Jain monk. Mahesh Hegde, currently out on bail, continues to peddle the ‘fake news.’
The question is why? Why are we so blind? Or, are we preferably neutrally biased?

An answer to this can easily be constructed on the principle of a coin toss where probability to cash a favourable outcome remains totally dependent on the fact whether the event is fairly unbiased or not. Else, the agenda remains constant. The probability of unfavourable outcome undeniably remains one.

Author is a research scholar at The Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda and serves as an editor to Academia.edu. He writes on Indian polity and jurisprudence
 

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A portrait of Indian poet and musician Rabindranath Tagore. Cherishsantosh/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA

But as Bob Dylan might croon, “the Times they are mistaken.”

A Bengali literary giant who probably wrote even more songs preceded Dylan’s win by over a century. Rabindranath Tagore, a wildly talented Indian poet, painter and musician, took the prize in 1913.

The first musician (and first non-European) to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, Tagore possessed an artistry – and lasting influence – that mirrored Dylan’s.
 

Bengal’s own renaissance man

Tagore was born in 1861 into a wealthy family and was a lifelong resident of Bengal, the East Indian state whose capital is Kolkata (formerly Calcutta). Born before the invention of film, Tagore was a keen observer of India’s emergence into the modern age; much of his work was influenced by new media and other cultures.

Like Dylan, Tagore was largely self-taught. And both were associated with nonviolent social change. Tagore was a supporter of Indian independence and a friend of Mahatma Gandhi, while Dylan penned much of the soundtrack for the 1960s protest movement. Each was a multitalented artist: writer, musician, visual artist and film composer. (Dylan is also a filmmaker.)

The Nobel website states that Tagore, though he wrote in many genres, was principally a poet who published more than 50 volumes of verse, as well as plays, short stories and novels. Tagore’s music isn’t mentioned until the last sentence, which says that the artist “also left … songs for which he wrote the music himself,” as if this much-loved body of work was no more than an afterthought.

But with over 2,000 songs to his name, Tagore’s output of music alone is extremely impressive. Many continue to be used in films, while three of his songs were chosen as national anthems by India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, an unparalleled achievement.
The Bengali national anthem, ‘Amar Sonar Bangla.’

Today, Tagore’s significance as a songwriter is undisputed. A YouTube search for Tagore’s songs, using the search term “Rabindra Sangeet” (Bengali for “Tagore songs”), yields about 234,000 hits.

Although Tagore was – and remains – a musical icon in India, this aspect of his work hasn’t been recognized in the West. Perhaps for this reason, music seems not to have had much or any influence on the 1913 Nobel committee, as judged by the presentation speech by committee chair Harald Hjärne. In fact, the word “music” is never used in the prize announcement. It is notable, however, that Hjärne says the work of Tagore’s that “especially arrested the attention of the selecting critics is the 1912 poetry collection ‘Gitanjali: Song Offerings.’”
 

Dylan: All about the songs

It may be that the Nobel organization’s downplaying of Tagore’s significance as a musician is part and parcel of the same thinking that has long delayed Dylan’s receiving the prize: uneasiness over subsuming song into the category of literature.

It’s rumored that Dylan was first nominated in 1996. If true, it means that Nobel committees have been wrestling with the idea of honoring this extraordinary lyricist for two decades. Rolling Stone called Dylan’s win “easily the most controversial award since they gave it to the guy who wrote ‘Lord of the Flies,’ which was controversial only because it came next after the immensely popular 1982 prize for Gabriel García Márquez.”

Unlike Tagore’s Nobel announcement, in which his songs were an afterthought, the presentation announcing Dylan’s award made it clear that aside from a handful of other literary contributions this prize is all about his music. And therein lies the controversy, with some saying he shouldn’t have won – that being a pop culture icon who wrote songs disqualifies him.

But like many great literary figures, Dylan is a man of letters; his songs abound with the names of those who came before him, whether it’s Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot in “Desolation Row” or James Joyce in “I Feel a Change Comin’ On.”

Why not celebrate Bob by being like Bob and reading something unfamiliar, great and historically important? Tagore’s “Gitanjali,” his most famous collection of poems, is available in the poet’s own English translation, with an introduction by William Butler Yeats (who won his own Nobel in literature in 1923). And YouTube is a great repository for some of Tagore’s most celebrated songs (search for “Rabindra Sangeet”).

Many music lovers have long hoped that the parameters of literature might be writ a bit larger to include song. While Dylan’s win is certainly an affirmation, remembering that he’s not the first can only pave the way for more musicians to win in years to come.

Author is Morse Alumni Distinguished Teaching Professor of Music, University of Minnesota

This article was first published on The Conversation

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“Even though from childhood I had been taught that the idolatry of the nation is almost better than reverence for God and humanity, I believe I have outgrown the teaching, and it is my conviction that my countrymen will truly gain their India by fighting against that education which teaches them that a country is greater than the ideal of humanity… Nationalism is a great menace. It is the particular thing which for years has been at the bottom of India’s troubles.”

These words were spoken by the poet whose song has been converted by a military band into the national anthem of India. Were Rabindranath Tagore to utter those words on a university campus in India today, he would be called “anti-national” and arrested for sedition.

I first encountered Tagore’s Lectures on nationalism in a political thought class at the University of Calcutta in the 1960s. We were the first generation born after independence. Brought up on string tales of patriotic heroism and sacrifice, we did not quite know how to deal with Tagore’s eloquent condemnation of modern nationalism. Later, in the course of my own research, I delved into the careers of many revolutionary nationalists. Needless to say, they rejected Tagore’s critique of their politics. But I was struck by the way in which virtually all of them recounted in their memories their deep immersion of Tagore’s poems and songs as a source of solace and inspiration during their darkest days underground or in prison. At that time, the best patriots had an immensely rich and subtle grasp of the culture of their country.

Image courtesy Tweenyjodd

Today, I also find it remarkable that my professors in the university — in the early decades after independence — should have required us to read Tagore’s passionate critique of the very idea of the nation. Were they challenging us to get underneath our comfortable patriotic common sense to seek new and nuanced rebuttals to Tagore’s arguments? If they were, they were in fact teaching us that neither reverence for the nation nor reverence for Tagore was the right approach to true knowledge. The attitude of bhakti has no place in the modern university.

We are now being told that it is a criminal act to question the integrity of the nation or the provisions of the constitution or even a Supreme Court Judgment within the premises of a university. The utterly bizarre application of the sedition law to words spoken at a gathering of students deflects comprehension. It shows utter disregard for the very concept of a constitutional democracy and its place in the university.

First of all, a serious argument can be made that the sedition law, as defined in section 124 A of the Indian Panel Code, had no place in a constitutional democracy based on the sovereignty of the people. The colonial law was designed to protect a government that was necessarily external to those over whom it ruled. One can see why any word, sign or visible representation that brought into hatred or contempt or excited disaffection, including disloyalty or enmity towards the government, might have been considered punishable by the colonial state. But how can the same argument apply to a government that is set up through periodic elections within a constitution that the people have given to themselves? The government in India today is not external or prior to the people constituted as a sovereign republic. Given the enormously wide meaning of “sedition” under this law, any criticism of the government of the day could be designated as incitement to disaffection and punished. Our courts, so fond of the modus vivendi rather than clear interpretation, have shied away from pronouncing section 124 A unconstitutional but have instead, in repeated judgments, emphasised the distinction between advocacy and incitement, and insisted that mere speech unconnected to actual harm caused against the state cannot be punished under this law. But who cares? The administration in every state has used the law to harass and intimidate the political opposition.

Entry into the University

Now we see this applied in a vicious form to the Indian university. This is not the first time the police have entered a university campus in India to arrest students. The old British convention of the sanctity of the university began to collapse in India from the 1970s when the campus became a site of political agitation drawing supporters and critics from outside. But leaving aside the years of the Emergency, never has a general campaign been launched by a national party in power that targets university students and teachers on the evidence of their speech alone as “anti- national” and charges them with sedition. It matters little if the charges do no stand up in court t in the end. Till then, intimidation and violence will be pursued by loyal vigilance gangs with impunity. It could lead to the tragic death of Rohith Venula, the horrific beating of Kanhaiya Kumar inside the premises of a court, or the harassment of hundreds whose names have been found on the phones of the arrested students.

There is a concerted campaign in the political arena, the media and even Parliament questioning the presumed autonomy of the university. The law must apply equally everywhere, we are being told, and so why should the university enjoy a special privilege? There is a fundamental confusion here, caused by lazy thinking or deliberate obfuscation, about the actual limits to freedom of speech in the university and the appropriate authorities who can enforce them. It is not as though anything can be said on a university campus. I cannot imagine a physics teacher wasting valuable time in class, except perhaps as a comic diversion, on someone claiming that the earth was flat or that the sun revolved around the earth. Depending on the appropriate forum, discipline and standard, university authorities always make decisions on what kinds of speech are irrelevant , confused or plain wrong. This includes discussions held outside the classroom which are an essential part of a vibrant campus life. But the crucial point is at the agencies of the state cannot be the appropriate authorities to make that judgment.

Take the issues involved in the latest controversy over University of Hyderabad and Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU). Are we to accept that the present boundaries of the Indian nation state cannot be critically examined in the classroom or seminar? Are History students not to be encouraged to explore the archives to unearth the history of colonial conquests, treaties and partitions that resulted in the territorial boundaries of present-day India? When the sovereign state of India has added a territory (such as Goa and Sikkim) or given up any territory (most recently through a treaty with Bangladesh), are those not to be studied? And since when are judgments of the Supreme Court exempt from public discussion in India? Can students of law and the constitution not be expected to answer questions about the Afzal Guru judgment when eminent persons who oppose capital punishment as a matter of principle and others who feel the weight of evidence in that case was insufficient to merit the death penalty, have gone on record with their views? Is the status of Kashmir and the northern Eastern states a taboo subject in the university when the daily news is full of stories of protests and violence in those places? Can resistant forms of religious and cultural practice that differ from those of the dominant mainstream not be discussed by teachers and students? In that case, the university might as well be declared dead. Instead , let the government build national seminaries designed to produce patriotic morons.

Limits on freedom of speech

Should there not be limits to freedom of speech on campus? There already are. There are governed by conventional practices that are not always the same on every campus and are enforced by appropriate university authorities. Last week, an MA student made a presentation in my seminar on the publicity material and school textbook produced by Daesh (or ISIS) in Syria and Iraq. The material was spine-chilling in its crude militarism and in the intensity of hatred. But the students were able to engage in a serious discussion on why this poisonous message might attract some people. That is what a university should be able to do. Perhaps the discussion might not have been appropriate for younger, less mature students. But that is a judgment that teachers have to make.

We must insist that a judgment on what can or cannot be said within the precincts of a university cannot be made by the agencies of the state because they are not equipped to make such judgments. There must be a clear separation of jurisdiction. If there is a murder or robbery or riot on campus, the university authorities will recognise their inability to deal with the matter and hand it over to the appropriate state authority. On all matters concerning speech and expression, however, the university authorities must be the sole judge to decide on the limits. No other principle is compatible with the ideas of the modern university.

Why has the attack on the university come in this form at this time? We could explain it by pointing to the evaporation of the Modi magic, the collapse of his promises of quick economic prosperity, and the recent electoral reverses of the Bharatiya Janata Party. That does explain the increasing assertion by the core right-wing Hindu organisations and the impunity with which their cards can indulge in violence and intimation. But who are their targets on university campuses? Both at the University of Hyderabad and JNU, they have targeted students and teachers associated with a new, somewhat loose, platform that bring together dalit, adivasi and minority students with radical left groups. This is a new formation that has emerged in the last decade or so, especially in the campuses of the central universities where admission policies have brought in larger numbers of students from socially and economically marginal groups. This form does not quite reflect the party structures at national or state level and, as a result, has shown itself to be far more innovative and adventurous than the traditional parties in picking its causes and mobilising support.

This is the formation that the Hindu Right-wing has targeted on the university campus. Perhaps it thinks that the recent and rather loose organisation of these campus groups will make it easy to isolate and corner them. Whipping up fears of lurking terrorists and hatred towards their anti-national sympathisers might silence the mainstream opposition parties. The latest campaign is not unlike that against “Un-American Activities” launched by the right- wing Joseph McCarthy in the United States in the 1950s. The targets then were Communist and Soviet Sympathizers in the universities, the Science laboratories and the film industry. Something similar is happening today in India.

Broad-Based Resistance

Fortunately, the resistance has been dramatic, resolute and broad-based. The lead has been provided, most remarkably, by the accused students themselves. Nothing has galvanised the protest more than Rohith Vemula’s incredibly moving suicide note and Kanhaliya Kumar’s allegedly “anti-national” speech. They are testimony to the indomitable struggle against adversity that brought these two young men into the best research-based universities in the country and the utter sincerity of their commitment to a just and human future. That young people like them, who should have been the pride of their communities and nation, were instead attacked as anti-national criminals for noting more than their expressed opinion, has outraged everyone associated with the university everywhere in the world.

If the criminal charges against these students collapse in court, it might perhaps serve as a damper on the Hindu right-wing campaign, but it would be unwise to count only on that. The university is too precious a place for critical thought to be left to the vagaries of uncertain judicial decisions. Those who have a stake in the pursuit of knowledge as a vocation must mount a resolute defense of the autonomy of the university in India. And here, teachers would do well to learn a thing or two from their students.

Partha Chatterjee is a political theorist and historian. He studied at Presidency College in Calcutta, and received his Ph.D. from the University of Rochester. He divides his time between Columbia University and the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta, where he was the Director from 1997 to 2007.
We thank the EMS Smrithi Organizing Committee, Ayaanthole for allowing us to publish this essay from Idea of India, Background Papers, EMS Smrithi Series compiled by M.N. Sudhakaran et al, Thrissur, June 2016.
 

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Comrades-singers from, and for, all of us.
 
Vinay and Charul, singers of protest songs and peoples' bards released their album of songs , ‘Aazadi’, in Ahmedabad recently. We were invited to speak on ‘Sangeet, Sapna aur Samvidhan’ – music, dreams and the constitution. In Hindi it is alliterative. The topic was as carefully chosen as. the banner and the music we heard that day.

The theme excited my imagination. Music is important to me. It has never failed to transport me to the world of dreams and a sense of wellbeing. It is a love that goes back to childhood, when musical notes wove their magic and spoke before we had words and a vocabulary to think, to Amma's – my mother's – lullabies as we fell asleep.

When slightly older Appa – my father – put the sounds in the context of structure and theory, he told us stories about the musicians. We had compulsory afternoon naps on Saturdays to make sure that we would stay awake to listen to the National Program on ‘All India Radio’. In the journey with him we traversed the unchartered by-lanes of music, often breaking away from the trodden path to listen to the music of the world. Our ears and minds had to learn to be patient; to hear what was not familiar and not instantly gratifying. But there was a palpable expansion of one’s universe. From Dikshithar to Thumries, from Ariyakudi Ramanujam Iyengar to Karim Khan and Fayaz Khan Sahib, to the strains of the Blue Danube, Peter and the wolf, and the Minuet in G, Tevaram and Paul Robeson. My innocent mind received and began to see melody and harmony, and prepared itself to understand counter point.

I now know that this process etched the concept of plurality as an irrefutable value in my life. As children we heard the principle articulated by our parent's comments, when we grumbled about food and other things, “If you cannot taste different food and listen to different music or thoughts, you will remain narrow and illiterate, illogical and prejudiced.”

‘Sangeet, Sapna and Samvidhan’, made sense and encapsulated these ideas. The journey to Ahmedabad, fraught with painful memories of engineered exclusivity and conflict, ironically presented a great opportunity to share music and by sharing an experience established a deep connection between apparent differences and disparities. Words have become loaded with preconceptions. One often misses the essence because of the sound and fury of conditioned reflex to jargon. But music could dispel the non-essential and go straight to the collective dreams articulated so well in our Constitution and its Preamble.

Sangeet
Laxman and I had diligently put the music together, random and scattered as they were, keeping  strict watch on the time – five minutes in all. In those five minutes we had to capture the abundant richness of varied traditions and modes. It was a challenge.

It began with the Tanpura shruthi, the basic drone for all Indian music. All sound is a variation of those seven note from sa to ni, do to ti. As Amjad Ali Khan explained in one of his recitals two decades ago – the seven notes, the flats and the sharps, define the universal language not only of music but of all expression; a million variations of song and rendering. All bound together in the common harmony of inter-relationship.

Even the random selection followed a chronology. It went back to Amma's lullaby, a kriti of Muthuswami Dikshitar – Hiranmayim. It brought back memories of glorious sound and the warmth of a mothers' unconditional love. The kriti – as the rendering is technically defined – was sung by T.M. Krishna, a great young contemporary musician, who is also democratically committed and an articulate columnist. As a musician he has always pushed boundaries, redefining spaces. As a citizen he sees himself beyond the category and the box of a stellar musician, into which he is relentlessly pushed by an admiring audience. His writings reflect his concerns, arching from music, to freedom of expression, and protest against fascist policy. There could not have been a better example of the interconnectivity of categories in and amongst ourselves!

The musical journey meandered to Kabir, popular for centuries. He was at one time exclusively the bard of the Dalits and the poor, the poet of Hindi speaking rural India, the saint of the “Kabir panthis”. In our acquaintance with the peasants and workers of Rajasthan, we have met scores of illiterate performers with repertoires of hundreds of his songs. But Kumar Gandharva sang to Kabir that evening – a tribute for popularising Kabir on the concert platform. As he sang “ Suntan hai guru gyani-jheeni jheeni”, one hoped that the gap between the Dalits and the others, the traditional folk style and the classical form began to be blurred.

In all these instinctive choices, the effort to bring differences together, without damaging their distinctive attributes, seems to have played a dominant role.

The music then made a leap to another part of our musical mind and the globe. It was a dramatic and not necessarily an easy change for the listener. It shifted to the last movement of the 9^th symphony of Beethoven- the choral. For many of us, it is a great revolutionary movement with its undisputed musical place in history. But it is no less important for bringing Schillers’s lyric celebrating universal brotherhood to millions of us. It is the symphony that played when the Berlin Wall was brought down. It is today the anthem of the European Union.

As Charul sings.. “Hindu kehta . . om namah shivaya” in her clear and melodious voice and Vinay ends this stanza with the azaan, clouds dispel along with his voice and the music reached, and touched, an infinity. The song never fails to strike the chords of our conscience.

We could hear the beginning of murmurs, perhaps everyone’s patience was being stretched. But this long standing favourite, also stands testimony to the human minds’ ability to absorb the other, the unfamiliar, so essential to building pluralism and tolerance. There was hope that the human voice used very differently in that movement, would nudge an opening up of mind space to listen and to appreciate difference.

The next switch came with the song of protest and freedom, the popular music of the modern world.  Perhaps the listeners would feel more comfortable. The eclectic audience was invisible. Joan Baez's melodious voice sang, “We shall overcome”. A song familiar to activist India as “Hum honge Kamayaab.”

It hopefully found familiar ground with activists in the audience. For the undergrads of the 60s it was politically evocative. The USA glorified in history for its advocacy of democracy, a country which freed its slaves; did not grant them equality. Martin Luther King and the movement for the equality of Black Americans is part of the living memory of many of us. This song and Martin Luther King’s ringing words, “We have a dream”, come together to make one of the most powerful statements for equality and inclusion in the modern world.

As Joan Baez sang with the power of faith and belief, my generation perhaps heard in our minds, Pete Seeger’s famous lyric also sung by her, “Where have all the flowers gone,” the powerful protest rendering against the war in Vietnam. There is a strong possibility that if a similar song had been sung today in the context of the Indian government and what constitutes the state today, the composers of music and the singer would have been jailed for sedition! Kovan, a folk singer in Tamil Nadu protesting in song against the liquor policy of the current establishment was in jail for sedition.

The music shifted from Joan Baez to Faiz and Nayara Noor. We went to Lahore for the Safdar Hashmi Festival in 1988, part of the collective euphoria of “jumbooriat”, democracy after many decades of martial law. The stadium in Lahore was jam packed. As curious and sympathetic Indians we heard songs and drums familiar and evocative. We did not have to battle with an alien culture. We had to accept that differences of nationality do not create barriers, as we hummed with “mast kalandar” and the songs; felt the rhythm of the drums in our bones. We heard Nayara Noor one of those memorable evenings. A voice of velvet and an elusive quality that is unforgettable.  Joan Baez and Nayara Noor are also women, that have brought in the feminist argument for peace and solidarity, into their singing and music. As her clear voice wafted, “Aaj bazaar mein pabajoolan”, into the cooling air in the Gujarat Vidyapeeth that night of dark differences were kept at bay.

Charul and Vinay have become synonymous with protest songs of quality, in lyrics and music. Perfectionists, committed with body and soul to what they do. They are very good friends and we have stood together at many a protest. In all the songs they have created and I have heard, one of my standing favourites remains; “Mat baanton insaan ko”. The lyric cautions us against the creation of conflicts, to prevent us from becoming tools in the hands of political manipulation. The song is popular – it’s sung both badly and well, in and out of tune, in seminars and workshops, in public meetings and drawing rooms. It is often sung without even knowing who the author of the lyric is, or even the names of the singers are. As Charul sings.. “Hindu kehta . . om namah shivaya” in her clear and melodious voice and Vinay ends this stanza with the azaan, clouds dispel along with his voice and the music reached, and touched, an infinity. The song never fails to strike the chords of our conscience.

The journey to songs of protest by people who use songs to express their angst, was organic. Lyrics composed by singers who may not read or write but can remember tomes of musical scores. Mohan Lal (Mohanba), singer of Kabir, Bhagatji to hundreds of villages in the Magra area of Rajasthan was also an MKSS and RTI activist. His musical imagination was from popular folk song, his singing always with others in chorus. His song “Raj Choron ko” spread the message of the RTI quicker and more clearly than the hundreds of lectures and articles written on the subject. He sang in his grainy voice, “Pehle wala chor”. The thief of yore shot you with a gun; today’s dacoits kill you with a pen. He sang to tell us that in this scenario, the right to see papers and documents is the only salvation from administrative tyranny, from poverty, inequality and injustice, to get us closer to the dream of freedom.

The musical journey ended for the night with the playing of the tanpura, coming back to remind us of the common harmony of the inter-relationship of notes. We have to be open to receive, allow the other point of view some space within our minds. It is the beginning of listening– an enabling process- to learn, love and tolerate others. A change of tone from flat to sharp, may allow us to organically deal with the discomfort of alien cultural expression. The music was an expression of hope, that signaled openness: an acceptance of differences in food, in apparel, politics and religious practices.

Tolerance is one of the non-negotiables to the feeling of and actually being equal.

Sapna
When Martin Luther King said: “I have a dream”, he spoke for all the unequal people of the world. What are the collective dreams of a tolerant country? Shankar spoke of those dreams which remain just at the edge of the horizon- permanently for some of us.

Shankar was born in a rural family, worked his way through school and college, worked in 17 different jobs, before he found his vocation as a communicator activist. He is a friend, colleague of many years and a part of the struggle and of protest, of songs and theatre. For Shankar dreams were not ephemeral. His powerful statement that day:

“We dream of food. In a stomach that is hungry, the dream cannot be of anything but food. We dream of food, we struggle for food, we fight over food. “

He drew out powerfully, the charter of hunger. He drew parallels between the campaign for food and hunger and the cultural expression that pushed it forward. In every successful campaign, it is that song that smells of the earth and contains a myriad images that draw on the harsh and lived experiences, that has propelled the desire to relentlessly pursued the demand for justice. We had no time to bring to our audience the powerful poem of Harish Bhidani, chanting , "Rotinaam satt hai, sattbolo gatt hai". We had heard it for the first time at a Jan Sunwai (People’s Hearing) in Bhim in 1994. Another poignant verse on hunger recalls that for a hungry person, everything that is round looks like a roti. Shankar made a simple, unpretentious reference to the unaddressed dreams of millions of Indians who were promised Azaadi in 1947, who are still waiting for it to happen.  Anticipating the beautiful lyric in whose name the album ‘Azaadi’, was released.

In the increasing bedlam of religious and political intolerance and bigotry, the sane voice of the framers of the Constitution remains a lode-star. It beckons and directs the continual demand for the logic of inter-relationship, the warmth of human concern, the space in the minds and hearts of people, the basis of a compassionate people and a fair and just government.

The entire discourse was located in the songs Charul and Vinay have sung, and in the music from the MKSS  for the RTI. The Charul and Vinay song ‘Janne ka Haq’ took the RTI to every part of India, and remains our anthem. Shankar's energy and charisma took the evening further. Dreams are expressed through collective songs and camaraderie of association.

The first song in the album released, Azaadi encapsulates the dreams of the right to live with dignity, to live without hunger -light the "chulha" everyday. These are people’s dreams, dreams which have become nightmares. The people who, to quote Galeano, remain the nobodies

The nobodies:
……………The nobodies: nobody's children, owners of nothing. The
nobodies: the no ones, the nobodied, running like rabbits,
dying through life, screwed every which way.
Who don't speak languages, but dialects.
Who don't have religions, but superstitions.
Who don't create art, but handicrafts.
Who don't have culture, but folklore.
Who are not human beings, but human resources.
Who do not have names, but numbers.
Who do not appear in the history of the world, but in the
police blotter of the local paper.
The nobodies, who are not worth the bullet that kills them
Eduardo Galeano
Shankar's dreams come from the depth of this collective conscience.

Samvidhan
The Constitution was more than a legal document for the nobodies, for those who journey through life seeking some rationality for existence with logic and justice. It is the dream of possibilities and probability. Constitutional guarantees remain critical for all those who get out of the personal and see the public domain as the other half of a continuing argument.

In the increasing bedlam of religious and political intolerance and bigotry, the sane voice of the framers of the Constitution remains a lode-star. It beckons and directs the continual demand for the logic of inter-relationship, the warmth of human concern, the space in the minds and hearts of people, the basis of a compassionate people and a fair and just government.

It was only appropriate that the last song of the album, and the conclusion of the evening should be with a hymn to the preamble – we the people," Hum Log". The pledge is a talisman and a daily prayer. Because for many Indians, the everyday is a scene of contention and battle, for equality, for dignity and justice. The oft-quoted extract from Rabindranath Tagore’s Gitanjali, carries the same urgency and prayer for wisdom today as it did almost a hundred years ago. They are words expressed with so much beauty and truth. A prayer for freedom tempered with principles, a country:
Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high
Where knowledge is free
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments
By narrow domestic walls
Where words come out from the depth of truth
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way
Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit
Where the mind is led forward by thee
Into ever-widening thought and action
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.
Rabindranath Tagore
 

(The writer is a former officer of the Indian Administrative Service (IAS who resigned; now political and social activist who founded the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan along with Shankar Singh, Nikhil Dey and many others apart from being a Magsaysay award winner for Community leadership)
 

The post Sangeet, Sapna aur Samvidhan: Diverse Tastes that animate India appeared first on SabrangIndia.

The saffron agenda of confounding mythology with history also undermines India’s magnificently multi-religious and heterodox history
 

Image: Tehelka.com

In an often–quoted remark, Henry Ford, the great captain of indus try, said, “History is more or less bunk.”  As a general statement about history, this is perhaps not an assessment of compelling delicacy. And yet Henry Ford would have been right to think, if that is what he meant, that history could easily become “bunk” through motivated manipulation.

This is especially so if the writing of history is manoeuvred to suit a slanted agenda in contemporary politics. There are organised attempts in our country, at this time, to do just that, with arbitrary augmentation of a narrowly sectarian view of India’s past, along with undermining its magnificently multi-religious and heterodox history. Among other distortions, there is also a systematic confounding here of mythology with history. 

An extraordinary example of this has been the interpretation of the Ramayana, not as a great epic, but as documentary history, which can be invoked to establish property rights over places and sites possessed and owned by others. (1) The Ramayana, which Rabindranath Tagore had seen as a wonderful legend (“the story of the Ramayana” is to be interpreted, as Tagore put it, not as “a matter of historical fact” but “in the plane of ideas”) and in fact as a marvellous parable of “reconciliation,” (2) is now made into a legally authentic account that gives some members of one community an alleged entitlement to particular sites and land, amounting to a license to tear down the religious places of other communities.  

Thomas de Quincey has an interesting essay called “Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts.” Rewriting of history for bellicose use can also, presumably, be a very fine art. I note the contemporary confounding of historical studies in India as the starting point of this lecture, even though I shall not be directly concerned with addressing these distortions: there are many superb historians in India to give these misconstructions their definitive due.  

Instead, I shall be concerned with outlining some methodological issues that relate to the subject of truth and falsehood in general history.  I will also try to develop and defend a view of history as “an enterprise of knowledge.”  There will be occasional references to contemporary debates (because I shall illustrate the general points with examples from Indian history), but the overall focus will be on more general themes. 

There will be occasions, in this context, to take a fresh look at India’s persistent heterodoxy, which includes not only its tendency towards multi–religious and multi–cultural coexistence (a point emphasised in Rabindranath Tagore’s “vision of India’s history”), but also its relevance for the development of science and mathematics in India. For history is not only an enterprise of knowledge in itself, it cannot but have a special involvement with the history of other enterprises of knowledge. The view of history as an enterprise of knowledge is, of course, very old–fashioned: I am not trying to innovate anything what-soever. However, this and related epistemic approaches to history have taken some hard knocks over the last few decades. These have come not so much from sectarian bigots (who have barely addressed issues of method), but in the hands of sophisticated methodologists who are not only sceptical of the alleged virtues of modernity and objectivity (often for understandable reasons), but have ended up being deeply suspicious also of the idea of “truth” or “falsehood” in history.  

They have been keen, in particular, to emphasise the relativity of perspectives and the ubiquity of different points of view. Perspectives and points of view, I would argue, are indeed important, not just in history, but in every enterprise of knowledge. This is partly because our observations are inescapably “positional.” Distant objects, for example, cannot but look smaller, and yet it is the job of analysis and scrutiny to place the different positional views in their appropriate perspectives to arrive at an integrated and coherent picture. The elementary recognition of the “positionality” of observations and perceptions does not do away with ideas of truth and falsehood, nor with the need to exercise reasoned judgement faced with conflicting evidence and clashing perspectives. I shall not here reiterate the methodological arguments I have presented elsewhere, but will discuss their relevance to the interpretation of Indian history. (3). 

Indeed, describing the past is like all other reflective judgements, which have to take note of the demands of veracity and the discipline of knowledge. (4).  The discipline includes the study of knowledge formation, including the history of science (and the constructive influences that are important in the cultivation of science) and also the history of histories (where differences in perspective call for disciplined scrutiny and are of importance themselves as objects of study).  

I shall be concerned with each. I should make one more motivational remark. I address this talk primarily to non-historians, like myself, who take an interest in history. I am aware that no self–respecting historian will peacefully listen to an economist trying to tell them what their discipline is like. But history is not just for historians. It affects the lives of the public at large.  

We non–historians do not have to establish our entitlement to talk about history. Rather, a good point of departure is to ask: why is history so often invoked in popular discussions?  Also, what can the general public get from history? Why, we must also ask, is history such a battleground? 

Knowledge and Its Use 

Let me begin by discussing some distinct motivations that influence the public’s interest in history. 

(1) Epistemic interest: The fact that we tend to have, for one reason or another, some interest in knowing more about what happened in the past is such a simple thought that it is somewhat embarrassing to mention this at a learned gathering. But, surely, catering to our curiosity about the past must count among the reasons for trying to learn something about historical events. An ulterior motive is not essential for taking an interest in history (even though ulterior reasons may also exist often enough). The simplicity of the idea of historical curiosity is, however, to some extent deceptive, because the reasons for our curiosity about the past can be very diverse and sometimes quite complex. The reason can be something very practical (such as learning from a past mistake), or engagingly illuminating (such as knowing about the lives of common people in a certain period in history), or largely recreational (such as investigating the chronology and history of India’s multiplicity of calendars). (5).

Also, the historical questions asked need not be straightforward, and may even be highly speculative. (6).  Whether or not it is easy to satisfy our curiosity (it may not always be possible to settle a debate regarding what actually happened), truth has an obvious enough role in exercises of this kind. In fact, curiosity is a demand for truth on a particular subject.

 Thomas de Quincey has an interesting essay called “Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts.” Rewriting of history for bellicose use can also, presumably, be a very fine art.

(2) Practical reason:  Historical connections are often invoked in the context of contemporary politics and policies. Indeed, present-day attitudes in politics and society are often strongly influenced by the reading — or misreading — of the history of past events. For example, sectarian tensions build frequently on grievances (spontaneous or cultivated) linked to past deeds (real or imagined) of one group against another. 
This is well illustrated, for example, by the recent massacres in Rwanda or former Yugoslavia, where history — or imagined history — were often invoked, concerning alleged past records of hostilities between Hutus and Tutsies, or between Serbs and Albanians, respectively.  Since these uses of history are aimed primarily at contemporary acts and strategies, the counteracting arguments which too invoke history,
though in the opposite direction, also end up being inescapably linked to current affairs.  

Given the dialectical context, we may be forced to take an interest in historical disputations on battlegrounds that have been chosen by others — not ourselves. For example, in defending the role of secularism in contemporary India, it is not in any way essential to make any claim whatsoever about how India’s Mughal rulers behaved whether they were sectarian or assimilative, whether they were oppressive or tolerant. 

Yet in the political discussions that have accompanied the activist incursions of communal politics in contemporary India (well illustrated, for example, by the rhetoric that accompanied the demolition of the Babri Masjid), a heavily carpentered characterisation of the Mughal rule as anti–Hindu was repeatedly invoked.  

Since this characterisation was to a great extent spurious and based on arbitrary selection, to leave that point unaddressed would have, in the context of the on going debate, amounted to a negligence in practical reason, and not just an epistemic abstinence.  Even the plausibility or otherwise of the historical argument that some of the juridical roots of Indian secularism can be traced to Mughal jurisprudence (a thesis I have tried to present in my paper, “Reach of Reason: East and West”), even though a matter of pure history, ends up inescapably as having some relevance for contemporary politics (even though that was not a claim I made). (7).

The enterprise of knowledge links in this case with the use of that knowledge. However, this does not, in any way, reduce the relevance of truth in seeking knowledge. The fact that knowledge has its use does not, obviously, make the enterprise of acquiring knowledge in any way redundant.  In fact, quite the contrary.

(3). Identity scrutiny:  Underlying the political debates, there is often enough a deeper issue related to the way we construct and characterise our own identities, in which too historical knowledge — or alleged knowledge — can play an important part.  Our sense of identity is strongly influenced by our under standing of our past. We do not, of course, have a personal past prior to our birth, but our self–perceptions are associated with the shared history of the members of a particular group to which we think we “belong” and with which we “identify.” Our allegiances draw on the evocation of histories of our identity groups. 

A scrutiny of this use of history cannot be independent of the philosophical question as to whether our identities are primarily matters of “discovery” (as many “commu-nitarian” thinkers claim), (8) or whether they are to a significant extent matters of selection and choice (of course, within given constraints — as indeed all choices inescapably are). (9).  

Arguments that rely on the assumption of the unique centrality of one’s community–based identity survive by privileging — typically implicitly — that identity over other identities (which may be connected with, say, class, or gender, or language, or political commitments, or cultural influences). In consequence, they restrict the domain of one’s alleged “historical roots” in a truly dramatic way. Thus, the increasing search for a Hindu view of Indian history not only has problems with epistemic veracity (an issue I discussed earlier), but also involves the philosophical problem of categorical oversimplification.

A good point of departure is to  ask: why is history so often invoked in popular discussions? Also, what can the general public get from history? Why, we must also ask, is history such a battleground?

It would, for example, have problems in coming to terms with, say, Rabindranath Tagore’s description of his own background as “a confluence of three cultures, Hindu, Mohammedan and British.”(10).  No less importantly, it cannot but be in some tension with the sense of pride that an Indian may choose to have, irrespective of his or her own religious background, at the historical achievements of, say, Ashoka or Akbar, or Kalidasa or Kabir, or Aryabhata or Bhaskara.  

To deny the role of reasoned choice, which can draw on the knowledge of the past, can be a very serious loss indeed.  Even those who want to identify with India’s historical achievements and perhaps take some pride in them (a legitimate enough concern) must also examine critically what to take pride in, since it is easy to be misled into a narrow alley through incitements to ignore India’s capacious heterodoxy in favour of a constricted sectarian identity.

While discovery and choice compete as the basis of identity, knowledge and choice are essentially complementary to each  other. Engagement with issues of identity enriches the enterprise of knowledge and extends its reach. 

Science and Intellectual Heterodoxy 

Let me now move to a more active view of the enterprise of knowledge, and turn to the history of science, which is among the historical subjects of study. As has already been argued, history is not only an enterprise of knowledge, its subject matter includes other enterprises of knowledge. The issue of heterodoxy, to which reference was made earlier, is particularly important here. Indeed, I would argue that there is a general connection between intellectual heterodoxy and the pursuit of science, and that this connection deserves more attention than it tends to get. 

Heterodoxy is important for scientific advance because new ideas and discoveries have to emerge initially as heterodox views, at variance with established understanding. One need reflect only on the history of the scientific contributions of, say, Galileo or Newton or Darwin, to see the role of heterodoxy in the process. The history of science is integrally linked with heterodoxy.

If this interpretation is correct, then the roots of the flowering of Indian science and mathematics that occurred in and around the Gupta period (beginning particularly with Aryabhata and Varahamihira) can be intellectually associated with persistent expressions of heterodoxies which pre–existed these contributions. In fact, Sanskrit and Pali have a larger literature in defence of atheism, agnosticism and theological scepticism than exists in any other classical language.

The origins of mathematical and scientific developments in the Gupta period are often traced to earlier works in mathematics and science in India, and this is indeed worth investigating, despite the historical mess that has been created recently by the ill–founded championing of the so–called “Vedic mathematics” and “Vedic sciences,” based on very little evidence.  What has, I would argue, more claim to attention as a precursor of scientific advances in the Gupta period is the tradition of scepticism that can be found in pre-Gupta India — going back to at least the sixth century B.C. — particularly in matters of religion and epistemic orthodoxy.  

Indeed, the openness of approach that allowed Indian mathematicians and scientists to learn about the state of these professions in Babylon, Greece and Rome, which are plentifully cited in early Indian astronomy (particularly in the Siddhantas), can also be seen as a part of this inclination towards heterodoxy.

Observation, Experience and Scientific Methods

Indeed, the development of Indian sciences has clear methodological connections with the general epistemological doubts expressed by sceptical schools of thought that developed at an earlier period. This included the insistence on relying only on observational evidence (with scepticism of unobserved variables), for example in the Lokayata and Charvaka writings, not to mention Gautama Buddha’s powerfully articulated agnosticism and his persistent questioning of received beliefs.  

The untimely death of professor Bimal Matilal has robbed us of the chance of benefiting from his extensive programme of systematic investigation of the history of Indian epistemology, but his already published works bring out the reach of unorthodox early writings on epistemology (by both Buddhist and Hindu writers) in the period that can be linked to the flowering of Indian science and mathematics in the Gupta era. (11). 

Similarly, the expression of hereticism and heterodoxy patiently – if somewhat grudgingly — recorded even in the Ramayana (for example, in the form of Javali’s advice to Rama to defy his father’s odd promise) presents methodological reasons to be sceptical of the orthodox position in this field. (12).

Indeed, in A Vision of India’s History, Rabindranath Tagore also notes the oddity of the central story of Rama’s pious acceptance of banishment based on “the absurd reason… about the weak old king [Rama’s father] yielding to a favourite wife, who took advantage of a vague promise which could fit itself to any demand of hers, however preposterous.”  Tagore takes it as evidence of “the later degeneracy of mind,” when “some casual words uttered in a moment of infatuation could be deemed more sacred than the truth which is based upon justice and perfect knowledge.”(13). 

In fact, Javali’s disputation goes deeply into scientific methodology and the process of acquiring of knowledge: There is no after–world, nor any religious practice for attaining that.  Follow what is within your experience and do not trouble yourself with what lies beyond the province of human experience. (14).

The increasing search for a Hindu view of Indian history would, for example, have problems in coming to terms with, say, Rabindranath Tagore’s description of his own background as “a confluence of three cultures, Hindu, Mohammedan and British.

As it happens, the insistence that we rely only on observation and experience is indeed a central issue in the departures in astronomy — initiated by Aryabhata and others — from established theological cosmology. 

The departures presented in his book Aryabhatiya, completed in 421 Saka or 499 A.D., which came to be discussed extensively by mathematicians and astronomers who followed Aryabhata (particularly Varahamihira, Brahmagupta and Bhaskara, and were also discussed in their Arabic translations), included, among others: (1) Aryabhata’s advocacy of the diurnal motion of the earth (rather than the apparent rotation of the sun around it), (2) a corresponding theory of gravity to explain why objects are not thrown out as the earth churns, (3) recognition of the parametric variability of the concept of “up” and “down” depending on where one is located on the globe, and (4) explanation of lunar and solar eclipses in terms respectively of the earth’s shadow on the moon and the moon’s obscuring of the sun.

Observational arguments, based on what Javali calls “the province of human experience,” are central to the departures initiated by Aryabhata in these and related fields (more on this presently). In the enterprise of knowledge involving the natural sciences, the intellectual connections between scepticism, heterodoxy and observational insistence, on the one hand, and manifest scientific advances, on the other, require much further exploration and scrutiny than they seem to have received so far.

History of Histories and Observational Perspectives

The observational issue is important also for the particular subject of history of histories, or metahistories (as we may call them). Given the importance of perspectives in historical writings, history of histories can tell us a great deal not only about the subject of those writings, but also about their authors and the traditions and perspectives they reflect. 

For example, James Mill’s The History of British India, published in 1817, tells us probably as much about imperial Britain as about India. This three–volume history, written by Mill without visiting India (Mill seemed to think that this non–visit made his history more objective), played a major role in introducing the British governors of India (such as the influential Macaulay) to a particular characterisation of the country.  

There is indeed much to learn from Mill’s history — not just about India, but more, in fact, about the perspective from which this history was written. This is an illustration of the general point that the presence of positionality and observational perspective need not weaken the enterprise of knowledge, and may in fact help to extend its reach. (15).

James Mill disputed and rejected practically every claim ever made on behalf of Indian culture and intellectual traditions, but paid particular attention to dismissing Indian scientific works. Mill rebuked early British administrators (particularly, Sir William Jones) for having taken the natives “to be a people of high civilisation, while they have in reality made but a few of the earliest steps in the progress to civilisation.”(16).

Indeed, since colonialism need not be especially biased against any particular colony compared with any other subjugated community, Mill had no great difficulty in coming to the conclusion that the Indian civilisation was at par with other inferior ones known to Mill: “very nearly the same with that of the Chinese, the Persians, and the Arabians,” and also the other “subordinate nations, the Japanese, Cochin–Chinese, Siamese, Burmans, and even Malays and Tibetans” (p. 248).

Mill was particularly dismissive of the alleged scientific and mathematical works in India. He denied the generally accepted belief that the decimal system (with place values  and the placed use of zero) had emerged in India, and refused to accept that Aryabhata and his followers could have had anything interesting to say on the diurnal motion of the earth and the principles of gravitation.  

Writing his own history of histories, Mill chastised Sir William Jones for believing in these “stories,” and concluded that it was “extremely natural that Sir William Jones, whose pundits had become acquainted with the ideas of European philosophers respecting the system of the universe, should hear from them that those ideas were contained in their own books.”(17).

A Contrast of Perspectives 

It is, in fact, interesting to compare Mill’s History with another history of India, called Ta’rikh al–hind (written in Arabic eight hundred years earlier, in the 11th century) by the Iranian mathematician Alberuni.(18).  
Alberuni, who was born in Central Asia in 973 AD, and mastered Sanskrit after coming to India, studied Indian texts on mathematics, natural sciences, literature, philosophy, and religion. Alberuni writes clearly on the invention of the decimal system in India (as do other Arab authors) and also about Aryabhata’s theories on earth’s rotation, gravitation, and related subjects.

These writings contrast sharply with Mill’s history from a dominant colonial perspective, well established by the beginning of the nineteenth century. The interest in Mill’s dismissive history in imperial Britain (Macaulay described Mill’s History of British India to be “on the whole the greatest historical work which has appeared in our language since that of Gibbon” (19) contrasts with extensive constructive interest in these Indian works among Islamic mathematicians and scientists in Iran and in the Arab world.

In fact, Brahmagupta’s pioneering Sanskrit treatise on astronomy had been first translated into Arabic in the 8th century by Muhammad ibn Ibrahim al–Fazari, and again by Alberuni three hundred years later in the eleventh century (since Alberuni had certain criticisms of the previous translation). Several Indian works on medicine, science and philosophy had Arabic rendering by the 9th century, and so on. It was through the Arabs that the Indian decimal system and numerals reached Europe, as did Indian writings in mathematics, science and literature, in general. Indeed, history of histories, particularly about science, can tell us a great deal about the nature of political and social relations between the different countries (such as Iran and Gupta India, on the one hand, Britain and colonial India, on the other).

As it happens, Alberuni’s history also provides interesting illumination on scientific discussions within India, and particularly on the constructive role of heterodoxy in this context. Even though Alberuni himself tended to reject Aryabhata’s theory regarding the diurnal motion of the earth, he describes patiently the Indian arguments in defence of the plausibility of Aryabhata’s theory, including the related theory of gravity.

Conservatism, Courage and Science

It is, in this context, particularly interesting to examine Alberuni’s discussion of Brahmagupta’s conservative rejection of the exciting departures proposed by Aryabhata and his followers on the subject of lunar and solar eclipses. Alberuni quotes Brahmagupta’s criticism of Aryabhata and his followers, in defence of the orthodox religious theory, involving Rahu and the so-called “head” that is supposed to devour the sun and the moon, and finds it clearly unpersuasive and reactionary. He quotes Brahma-gupta’s supplication to religious orthodoxy, in Brahmasiddhanta: Some people think that the eclipse is not caused by the Head. This, however, is a foolish idea, for it is he in fact who eclipses, and the generality of the inhabitants of the world say that it is the Head that eclipses. The Veda, which is the word of God from the mouth of Brahman, says that the Head eclipses… On the contrary. Varahamihira, Shrishena, Aryabhata and Vishnuchandra maintain that the eclipse is not caused by the Head, but by the moon and the shadow of the earth, in direct opposition to all (to the generality of men), and from the enmity against the just–mentioned dogma. (20).

Alberuni, who is quite excited about Aryabhata’s scientific theories of eclipses, then accuses Brahmagupta (a great mathematician himself) for lacking the moral courage of Aryabhata in dissenting from the established orthodoxy. He points out that, in practice, Brahmagupta too follows Aryabhata’s methods in predicting the eclipses, but this does not prevent Brahmagupta from sharply criticising — from an essentially theological perspective — Aryabhata and his followers for being heretical and heterodox.  Alberuni puts it thus: … we shall not argue with him [Brahmagupta], but only whisper into his ear: …Why do you, after having spoken such [harsh] words [against Aryabhata and his followers], then begin to calculate the diameter of the moon in order to explain the eclipsing of the sun, and the diameter of the shadow of the earth in order to explain its eclipsing the moon?  Why do you compute both eclipses in agreement with the theory of those heretics, and not according to the views of those with whom you think it is proper to agree? (21).

  The interest in Mill’s dismissive history in imperial Britain contrasts with extensive constructive interest in these Indian works among Islamic mathematicians and scientists in Iran and in the Arab world.

The connection between heterodoxy and scientific advance is indeed close, and big departures in science require methodological independence as well as analytical and constructive skill. Even though Aryabhata, Varahamihira and Brahmagupta were all dead for many hundred years before Alberuni was writing on their controversies and their implications, nevertheless Alberuni’s carefully critical scientific history helps to bring out the main issues involved, and in particular the need for heterodoxy as well as moral courage in pursuit of science. 

A Concluding Remark 

To conclude, I have tried to illustrate the different ways in which history has relevance for non-historians — indeed the general public. First, there are diverse grounds for the public’s involvement with history, which include (1) the apparently simple attractions of epistemic interest, (2) the contentious correlates of practical reason, and (3) the scrutiny of identity–based thinking. All of them — directly or indirectly — involve and draw on the enterprise of knowledge. 

Second, history is not only itself an enterprise of knowledge, its domain of study incorporates all other enterprises of knowledge, including the history of science. In this context, it is easy to see the role of heterodoxy and methodological independence in scientific advance. The intellectual connections between heterodoxy (especially theological scepticism) and scientific pursuits (especially big scientific departures) deserve more attention in the history of sciences in India. 

Third, metahistories — or histories of histories — also bring out the relevance of an appropriate climate for the enterprise of knowledge. The pursuit of knowledge not only requires an open mind (the contrast between Alberuni’s scientific interest and Mill’s colonial predispositions radically differentiate their treatments of the same subject matter), it also requires an inclination to accept heterodoxy and the courage to stand up against orthodoxy (Alberuni’s critique of Brahmagupta’s criticism of Aryabhata relates to this issue).  The plurality of perspectives extends the domain of the enterprise of knowledge rather than undermining the possibility of that enterprise. (22).

Since the rewriting of Indian history from the slanted perspective of sectarian orthodoxy not only undermines historical objectivity, but also militates against the spirit of scientific scepticism and intellectual heterodoxy, it is important to emphasise the centrality of scepticism and heterodoxy in the pursuit of scientific knowledge. The incursion of sectarian orthodoxy in Indian history involves two distinct problems, to wit, (1) narrow sectarianism, and (2) unreasoned orthodoxy.  The enterprise of knowledge is threatened by both. 

(The writer, a Nobel prize winner is Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, and Lamont University Professor Emeritus, Harvard University. The above paper was presented by the writer at the Indian History Congress in Calcutta)

ENDNOTES 

1. The confusing story of a recent statement by a Director of the Indian Council of Historical Research (ICHR) announcing exact knowledge where Rama, the avatar, was born (not surprisingly precisely where the Babri Masjid stood — from which the property rights for building a temple exactly there is meant to follow!), combined with the assertion that the Masjid itself had no religious significance (followed by an embarrassed dissociation of the ICHR itself from these remarkable pronouncements), illustrates the confounding of myth and history.
2. Rabindranath Tagore, A Vision of India’s History (Calcutta: Visva–Bharati, 1951), p. 10; this essay was first published in Visva-Bharati Quarterly, 1923.
3. See “Positional Objectivity,” Philosophy and Public Affairs, 1993.  I have also illustrated the methodological issues involved in the context of Indian history in On Interpreting India’s Past (Calcutta: Asiatic Society, 1996), also included in Sugata Bose and Ayesha Jalal, eds., Nationalism, Democracy and Development: Reappraising South Asian State and Politics (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1996).
4. I have discussed the demands of descriptive discipline in “Accounts, Actions and Values: Objectivity of Social Science,” in C. Lloyd, ed., Social Theory and Political Practice (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983).
5. I have tried to argue elsewhere that the history of Indian calendars also provides some insights on the lives of the people and particularly on the state of science and mathematics at different times, and can even illuminate the political ideals that may be indirectly reflected in devising new calendars. The last is well illustrated, for example, by Emperor Akbar’s initiation of a synthetic solar calendar in the form of Tarikh–ilahi, in 1584, and its continuing influence on the Bengali san (on these issues, see my “India through Its Calendars,” The Little Magazine, 1, 1, May 2000). 
6. A good example of an interesting but rather bold speculation is Rabindranath Tagore’s conjecture about a story in the epics that “the mythical version of King Janamejaya’s ruthless serpent sacrifice” may quite possibly stand for an actual historical event involving an “attempted extermination of the entire Naga race” by the dominant powers in ancient India (Tagore, A Vision of India’s History, p. 9). 
7. Amartya Sen, “Reach of Reason: East and West,” The New York Review of Books, July 20, 2000. 
8. See Michael Sandel, Liberalism and the Limits of Justice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2nd edition, 1998), for a fine presentation of the “discovery” view of identity, and in particular of the thesis (among others) that “community describes not just what they have as fellow citizens but also what they  are, not a relationship they choose (as in a voluntary association) but an attachment they discover, not merely an attribute but a constituent of their identity” (pp. 150–2).
9. I have discussed the role of choice in the selection of identities and in the determination of priorities in my Romanes Lecture at Oxford, Reason before Identity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), and in my Annual British Academy Lecture (to be published by the British Academy): for a shorter version, see “Other People,” The New Republic, September 25, 2000. 
10. See Rabindranath Tagore, The Religion of Man (London: Unwin, 1931, 2nd edition, 1961), p. 105.
11. See particularly Bimal Matilal, Perceptions (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986). 
12. Even though I shall not discuss in this paper the role and reach of Arjuna’s disagreements with Krishna’s high deontology in the  Mahabharata, and in particular in the Bhagavad–Geeta, that too is philosophically an important departure; on this see my “Consequential Evaluation and Practical Reason,” The Journal of Philosophy, 97 (September 2000). 
13. Tagore, A Vision of India’s History, p. 22.
14. The translation is taken from Makhanlal Sen, Valmiki Ramayana (Calcutta: Rupa, 1989), pp. 174–5.
15. On this general subject, see my “Positional Objectivity” (1993), and also “Accounts, Actions and Values: Objectivity of Social Science” (1983). 
16. James Mill, The History of British India (London, 1817; republished, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975), pp. 225–6.
17. Mill, The History of British India, pp. 223–4.
18. For an English translation, see Alberuni’s India, translated by EC Sachau, edited by AT Embree (New York: Norton, 1971). 
19. Quoted in John Clive’s introduction to Mill, The History of British India (republished, 1975), p. viii. 
20. Alberuni’s India, pp. 110-1. 
21. Alberuni’s India, p. 111.
22. On this see also my “Accounts, Actions and Values: Objectivity of Social Science” (1983) and  “Positional Objectivity” (1993).

Archived from Communalism Combat, January 2001. Year 8, No. 65, Forum, Published under the title History and the enterprise of knowledge

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